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Comment by jcfrei | Hacker News Reader

It's certainly not "backed by the west". These dictatorships exists because they allow the elites to exchange the profits from the sale of natural resources in exchange for dollars and euros. That money then flows into western equities, bonds and real estate. It's the (western) dependence on these natural resources that enables the regimes not the backing by the governments.

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it's tolerated by the west. The most effective way to punish regimes would be to:

- take away (arrest, freeze, whatever) the elite's real estate in the west

- same thing with other assets, banc accounts etc

- ban them from living in the west or going to the west on vacation, for medical treatment.

- ban their families from living in the west, their kids from studying there.

this is not my idea, you will find similar suggestions a hundred times in different forms on the Russian-speaking internet.

maybe there is no legal base right now to do it as described, but the alternative is broad sanctions that hit the small people harder then regime collaborators.

edit: formatting

This. So much of this. Most of the money that disctatorship regimes steal out of their countries are actually invested into western countries by their family members, friends and their pet oligarchs.

US, EU and UK profit from oppressive regimes and don't have any interest of actually hurting them. And why should they? They have their own people to think of.

Cuba and Iran have been under sanctions for a long time. Dictators are very interested in not losing their jobs. I think, from the comfort of my home, that there are two paths out of a dictatorship: one is military and involves a brutal invasion of the country with the willingness to stay there for decades, the other is a progressive improvement of life conditions and gentle external influence

That's very difficult to do because it will increase prices of said natural resources (for example natural gas). As you've seen in Kazakhstan itself the tolerance for fuel increases is not very high in the population. A very noble thinking government can be ousted very quickly just because it tries to do the "right thing" and punish said exporters. The best thing to do is to reduce reliance on these countries exports, investing in alternative energy sources or develop domestic resources. But there's often an even stronger opposition to develop let's say a domestic natural gas field than to send money to corrupt regimes somewhere far away. So that's where we're at.

It's certainly not "backed by the west".

This characterization is simply naive.

True, it's not like the western powers are shouting their support from the rooftops. But they are more than happy to play ball with these regimes (including high-level military cooperation and lucrative trade agreements) as long as it it doesn't get, you know, "too" embarrassing for them to do so.

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